What's a goal?

Some days are just not a challenge here. I’m wondering what I should do and bam – I should blog. So many folks are saying “I love your blog” “I’m going to check your blog.” I really should blog more… so here’s my blog.

People said I should come here with a goal… get fit. Lose weight (did you just call me fat?). Read 10 books. Learn Arabic. I think in one of my blogs I said my goal was to reduce my run time. That must have been in the first 10 days I was here… when it got below 98 degrees on a regular basis.

I didn’t come here with any goals… or at least any that I was serious about… but I did accomplish something that maybe my subconscious said should be a goal… and that is to be productive – step forward and do my job well… People from all around me are giving me positive reinforcement that I’ve accomplished this and it is only ½ way through my deployment… Well, actually more than ½ way now. I think I’m down near 50 days left. I can honestly say “I’m leaving next month.” How cool is that?

So I learned some stuff… one thing I definitely learned is that when at war, my staff officer skills, if I had any, drop to nil… I’ve taken to saying “Charlie doesn’t care if my eyes are dotted.” My Col here seems to want my eyes dotted though… I let her dot them and I move on to other things. I think if I were not accomplishing so much, I wouldn’t get away with this.

Bad stuff has been happening… and my job is to tell the story: good or bad. And even through the bad stuff, I’ve done a good job telling our bad news. There have been a couple good news things too… things that took a lot of coordination and after it was pulled off, I felt proud of the work done. What a great feeling at the end of the day… I think that’s why I don’t mind working 14 hours 7 days a week… other than there isn’t crap all else to do here—I actually feel accomplished at the end of the day.

Today though, I’ve crossed so many things off my to-do list over the last 2 days, I am brainstorming new hair-brained ideas and putting them into action. How great does that feel? So much done I can actually do new stuff…

I got a letter today from my Taco. That brightened my spirits… I can’t wait to go home and go visit her in Florida… she sent me pictures of her new house all decorated… This letter was the first time I saw her street address. Her street number is 224 just like the first house I owned was 224… A numerical cosmic connection proving we were meant to be best friends.

Yesterday I had to go to the other base near here for work… they have a Chili’s Too there by the pool… kind of a mini Chili’s express… but with a real kitchen where the steak was flame grilled instead of the boiled meat they serve here… it was the first steak I’ve had since I’ve been here… A medium cooked ribeye with mushrooms over it. Oh so yummy. And the veggies were not all mashed and over cooked to all hell… al dente! I went to their BX too for a change of pace… See if their BX had anything different that my BX… most of the same crap, except for the shoes… so I bought some new shoes. “A shoe sale!” You can’t wear open toe’d saddles here for some dumb reason. So I bought close toe’d sandals. They have more dumb ass rules here that don’t make a bit of sense. Even Charlie wears sandals here. It’s too damn hot for anything else.

I’m planning an off base trip tomorrow with my boss and our coworker. Do some shopping… she said she’d treat for “the big meal of the day.” Rock on. I love rich single colonels… I don’t necessarily need anything… a couple more gifts for a couple more people. I’ve not really bought myself anything… I was hoping for a rug but they are too damn expensive here. I need to go to Iran for that kind of thing I guess… not like that’s going to happen.

Off to run the races

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